Action Alert: 16 Palestinians Made Homeless

It will not figure on the
agenda of the cease-fire talks which CIA chief George Tenet
is conducting. Officially, it was not an act of war but just
"law enforcement".

It happened this morning at Wadi
Kadum, a Palestinian neigborhood of East Jerusalem. A
governmental demolition crew accompanied by hundreds of
armed police descended upon the home of 16 people - of the
brothers Farikh and Samikh Kharbawi, who six years ago
built a shared home for their two families.

There was a
pitched battle; family members, aided by neighbors, tried
their best to defend their home. But the tear gas
canisters, thrown in profusion, did their job; resistance
was broken, the house was razed to the ground and sixteen
new homeless persons created, courtesy of the Government of
Israel.

In addition to the known formula that "the house
was built without a permit", another "justification" was
that the Kharbawi family's house was in the way of the
planned "Jerusalem Ring Road". We have heard that also
before.

If you draw a line between the homes that have
been demolished in this area "on behalf of the ring road"
you will have a road that zig-zags quite strangely. Some
city planners have proposed in vain alternate routes for the
road which will not require demolitions.

Jerusalem Mayor
Ehud Olmert was not involved in the destruction of this
particular "illegal house", at least not officially. The
protest campaign following the wave of demolitions which
Olmert perpetrated two weeks ago may have made some
impression. But Tzvi Schneider, a senior Interior Ministry
official, had announced some days ago he would "show the
municipality how it is done" and he was as good as his word.
And he does not seem the kind of person to rest content
with one house only.

It seems necessary to again resort
to sending protest messages to the authorities -
governmental this time. Even more than the directly
implicated Interior Minister Eli Yishai, the supposed
"moderate" of the Shas Party, it is necessary to target
Foreign Minister Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. You
can send him a message directly to the ministry or via the
Israeli embassy in your country (or even better, both).

Following is a sample message which you can use.

(Please send copies to info@gush-shalom.org and to
info@rhr.israel.net(Rabbis for Human Rights).

* Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres fax +972 2 5303506
or +972 2 5303896

copies to:

* Interior Minister Eli
Yishai fax +972 2 5666376

* Secretary of
State Colin Powell Bureau of Near East
Affairs, fax: +1 202 261 8577

Maybe you knew it in
advance, or you also got the news through the media. But one
thing is sure: if you can't stop even the demolition of
Palestinian houses, what are you then still doing in this
government?

The sudden and brutal demolition by police of
the Kharbawi family home at Wadi Kadum Neighborhood, East
Jerusalem, on June 11, left sixteen people - young and old,
men and women and children - homeless. Sixteen people whose
only crime was being Palestinian, living under Israeli
rule, and seeking to have a roof over their heads. This is
not "law enforcement". It is an act of war, a war waged
against a helpless occupied population, and making any
claims towards international mediators - that Israel is
observing a cease-fire and desiring a calming down of the
situation - sound hollow. Or is the real agenda of your
government to provoke escalation towards total war?

(Your
name and address)

For information about Gush Shalom visit
the website:

http://www.gush-shalom.org/
(including the Boycott List of Products of Settlements)
email: info@gush-shalom.org;
Also on the website: Sign the "Our Jerusalem,
Capital of Two States" petition full
text in Hebrew, Arabic and English

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